


Fear and Cruelty

by BrooklynBooks



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Cinderella AU, Cutesy, F/M, Fluff, If You Squint - Freeform, Kinda, LOTS of comforting, and reassuring that they deserve safety and love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 14:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15559932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBooks/pseuds/BrooklynBooks
Summary: There are good things in the world if you know how to look for them. When Ella looks, she finds Finch.





	Fear and Cruelty

The coincidence had not been lost on Ella. She had been specifically named to invoke the fairytale riches-to-rags-to-royalty story and now her life read like its prologue.

Her mother cold in the ground from an influenza outbreak… Her step-mother calculating and vain, but rich enough to keep her destitute, blue-blooded father afloat… Her step-sisters possessing the wicked combination of immense boredom and a lack of proper intelligence with which to fill it… Her father now gone, like her mother, after a mysterious accident…

Ella, turned servant in her own home, had no prospects for escape. Anyone would be hard pressed to find a bright spot, but she knew they existed.

Every morning, just as dawn broke into sharp, angular shapes across the city’s buildings, Ella left the house to buy a newspaper. The paper itself was for her step-mother, who skimmed through the social pages in haughty silence while Ella served her family breakfast. She didn’t care, she had found her bright spot in the boy who sold her the paper every morning.

Finch Cortes could be found hawking headlines on a street corner across from the pharmacy where Ella bought the mercury her step-mother ingested by the bottle-full. He always had a smile and a kind word for her, tipping his hat as they traded penny for paper. They never shared more than a few moments because Ella always had to hurry home, but she held those moments close to her heart.

She couldn’t know that his smile always dropped a fraction after she left. She still surprised him everytime she appeared on his corner, taking the time to learn his name, to speak to him, even if just for a moment. No one ever stopped to talk to a newsie. More than that, she could see the person behind the name and the dirt and the newsprint.

Only, one day she didn’t appear. He did his best not to think about it. She could be sick or busy or any number of things that had nothing to do with him. And yet, he found himself looking for her in the crowd, as if by wishing he could make her materialize. She never did and Finch went home to the lodge, his heart sinking in his chest. The thought of her, the worry for her, rubbed absently against his other thoughts like the pebble in his shoe. He’d have a hole soon, if he wasn’t careful.

A week passed with no sign of her. Until one night on the fire escape, while fidgeting and worrying and firing his slingshot to clear his head, he saw her. She had climbed, shaking and crying, onto a lower landing of the rickety scaffolding.

Ella didn’t know if this was the right building, she could only guess. Newsboy Lodging Houses littered Manhattan, from the Tribune to the Sun, from Harlem to the Lower East Side. How could she be sure Finch even lived here?

“Ella?” Finch’s voice echoed down to her, startling her out of her thoughts. “You all right? What are you doing here?”

“Finch!” she cried. “Thank heaven it’s you.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, offering a hand to help her up the stairs to his landing. He didn’t like how unsteadily she stood on her feet.

“I… I just… didn’t want to be at home. I wanted to see you.” She winced. Surely if she said too much he would turn her away. She knew she shouldn’t complain.

He smiled through his confusion, happy for a moment, then his heart fell. The soft darkness of the fire escape painted the world in layers of shadows, but the streetlight at the end of the alley lit up the purple-black bruise growing against her cheekbone. He reached out, but pulled away when she flinched.

“Who hit you?”

He sounded angry, so she was quick to say, “It’s my fault.”

“No.” Finch frowned, stiller than she’d ever seen him. “It’s the fault of the bastard that hit you.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to be,” he insisted.

She thought that if she looked up at him, his eyes would surely convince her to believe him. Newsies made people believe them all the time. Finch did it for a living. And if she believed him, it would only make it hurt more because she’d feel anger on top of everything else. And she’d feel it necessary to leave her step-mother. In that case, she suspected that fear would rule her anger and she’d never leave, but the anger would stay and that would hurt more than the bruises.

“Please, Ella. Who hit you?” He had softness in his voice and it surprised her. During the day, he shouted just to be heard over the din of the city, full of gravel and the rough edges of the street. He had ground them into pebbles for her.

She slumped down onto the stairs and hid her face in her hands. Finch wouldn’t have to look at the bruises, so she didn’t care that it hurt. She whispered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Rusting metal creaked as Finch sat beside her. “I ran away from home when I was eight,” he said evenly, making her peak at him through her fingers. He looked like vulnerability, sharp edges and raw skin, bones and dirt. “ My mother wasn’t really all there after she got sick. And my father hit me, when he was home. I was used to that. Then one night he came home with a gun and I left.”

Ella put her hands down. She couldn’t bring herself to look away from him. “That must have hurt,” she said, wishing she could place a hand on his shoulder. Something to lift the pain she saw stretching across his face.

He stared, fixed, at the brick of the lodging house, coiled like a spring. “They didn’t want me. The newsies do. Simple as that.”

She hummed. “Simple, huh?”

Finch turned to her and she jolted. She’d never been close enough before to see the color of his eyes—bright green and brown flecks. She thought of Central Park.

“It could be simple for you too. If you wanted it.” He softened again, worrying at his second knuckles while he waited for her to react.

“That would be nice.” She looked away. Nice, but not possible.

“They’d all love you.” A faint smile slid onto his features, like sunlight over the horizon. “You’d fit right in. And you’ve seen me sell. I think you’d be good.” The light even reached his voice.

“Really?”

His smile widened, unfurling his selling smile. All teeth. “Would I lie to you?”

“Probably.”

“If I did, would that be worse than bruises and cigarette burns, locked away in that house save for once a day?”

She shook her head at him, smiling softly anyway. She knew if she looked him in the eye, he’d convince her. He’s good at what he does.

He pulled his smile back, looking at her like he had something to look for. “Please. I promise I’ll look out for you, all of us will. It’s not easy, our life, but it’s got freedom.”

He had warmth to him when he said it and she thinks only later that the warmth drew her in. Her house had always been cold, with voids in the place of love. She realizes only looking back on that first night that he, and his promises and his smile and even his lies, had been enough. She ruled her fear and finally came home.


End file.
